IN TEN YEARS, THE GUN REGISTRY HAS NOT HAD ONE GOOD AUDIT
“The Hill and Knowlton report uncovered many blunders and many more have been blacked out by the bureaucrats. What are the Liberals still trying to hide?”

Ottawa - Saskatchewan M.P. Garry Breitkreuz, the Conservative Firearms Critic, released another damning internal audit of the $2 billion dollar gun registry. “They’re still batting zero in audits. They have struck out every time they stepped up to the plate in the last ten seasons,” exclaimed Breitkreuz. “Once again, the Liberals are exposed for their notoriously bad planning.”

The 40-page “Interim Report” was completed under a contract between Hill and Knowlton and the Treasury Board of Canada. The report was titled: Management Review of the Financial Position of the Canadian Firearms Program and Canada Firearms Centre and Options for the Future.

Here are three of the most alarming findings by Hill and Knowlton:

• Gun registry bureaucrats claim they “could not effectively manage the program and be accountable for its results” when the computer contracts would eat up nearly 60% of their annual budget.
  BREITKREUZ COMMENT Taxpayers want to know: When was this program ever effectively managed? And, in the face of the mounting body of evidence, why are 8 out of 10 gun registry bureaucrats getting bonuses?
  
• Amazingly, the audit also recommends that the Firearms Centre’s “departmental status be revisited”.
  BREITKREUZ COMMENT More evidence of even poor planning! The Liberals made it a department only two years ago.
  
• Two pages of financial risks were blacked out by Treasury Board. Hill and Knowlton stated: “costs will continue to spin out of control” if these financial risks were not “managed carefully”.
  BREITKREUZ COMMENT This whole firearms program has been a fiasco since the Liberals rammed it through Parliament in 1995.

“Nothing has gone right at the CFC. The gun registry has been totally ineffective at keeping firearms out of the hands of criminals and reducing violent crime,” declared Breitkreuz. “If saving lives was the objective, little imagination is needed to see that the $2 billion the Liberals wasted on the gun registry should have been spent on MRI’s or cancer research and treatment. If public safety was the objective, then thousands more police on the streets would have made more sense.”

“This report was completed more than a year ago and yet no mention of it was ever made in any of Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan’s representations before the Justice Committee or in her reports to Parliament. In 2002, the Auditor General warned the Liberals about keeping Parliament in the dark on the firearms file. “Why do they continue to hide the embarrassing truth from Parliament?” asked Breitkreuz. “The Auditor General is scheduled to expose these blunders and likely many more next February.”

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Le 16 juin 2005 EN DIX ANS, PAS UNE SEULE VÉRIFICATION DU REGISTRE DES ARMES À FEU N’A ÉTÉ POSITIVE